


Kill Me Now

by tj_teejay



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Community: daredevilkink, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 01:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4544631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tj_teejay/pseuds/tj_teejay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Foggy gets knocked on his ass by a doozie of a migraine, it’s Matt who jumps at the chance to be the caretaker for once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kill Me Now

**Author's Note:**

> Written for two prompts from the daredevilkink meme, which I thought would make a perfect combination: Prompt #1: [Foggy gets migraines](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/3230.html?thread=6183070#cmt6183070) – Prompt #2: [Matt the Caretaker](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/3230.html?thread=7366814#cmt7366814).  
> And let me just say that I never get tired of whumping the hell out of these characters, and apparently the kinkmeme doesn’t either. *shrug* So don’t blame _me_ , okay?  
> Thanks go out to [goldstandard](http://archiveofourown.org/users/goldstandard/pseuds/goldstandard) for the sanity check and the helpful hints. (I feel for everyone who has debilitating migraines like this, cause the two mild ones I’ve personally had weren’t this bad.)
> 
> +-+-+-+-+

Foggy has _not_ missed this. Not in the least.

It’s been a while since one of these hit. So long, in fact, that he’s blissfully forgotten how much it’s going to suck.

He rubs his eyes with the knuckles of his index fingers, because maybe it’s just the stress of staring at the computer screen for too long. Maybe he’s misreading the signs, or maybe it’s just his optic nerves playing tricks on him. After all, it’s been a long day. Karen went home at least two hours ago, but the paperwork just keeps coming.

When his hands come away from his face and he blinks a few times, he realizes wishful thinking is as dead as chivalry, because the white spots dancing in front of his eyes persist with a tenacity second to none. Well, actually they’re more like tiny lightning flashes that make it impossible to focus on anything.

He stares back at the text on his computer screen, because maybe he can bargain with his stupid brain through sheer willpower, but the letters jump and jitter. Zig-zag lines dither across his field of vision to the point where reading anything smaller than a humongous billboard becomes a useless endeavor.

He groans, because he knows what’s yet to come, then heaves his misbehaving body off his desk chair.

Matt lifts his head when Foggy appears in his doorway. Foggy tries not to grab the doorframe for support, even though he kinda wants to. The wooden edge presses into his shoulder when he leans against it a little too heavily.

He pushes the tips of his fingers into his eyelids, because his friend’s face becomes a display of wildly sparkling, psychedelic confetti in grayscale that’s starting to make him dizzy. And Matt immediately knows what this is, because he’s seen it more than once, and, well, because he just… knows—awesome super senses and all.

“Aura?” Matt asks.

Foggy nods and hums something that he hopes sounds confirmatory enough.

“How bad?”

Foggy gives a little grunt. “Bad enough that I wanna gouge my eyes out. I have a feeling this one’s gonna be a real doozie.”

Matt gets up, walks closer. “You haven’t had a migraine in a while, right?”

Foggy shrugs, but it falls flat halfway. “I don’t know. A year, maybe? And just for the record: I have _not_ missed this.”

“I hear ya. You should go home.”

“Yeah, I probably should. Think I’m gonna have to wait this out, though. I can’t see shit right now.”

Matt is already on the way to Foggy’s office. “Where’s your bag?”

“Why?”

“Cause we’re going before this hits full force.”

“No,” he says, and his voice is somehow just a little too whiny. “I’m a grown-up. I can handle this.”

Matt isn’t shaken off so easily. “I’m sure you can. Doesn’t mean that you have to. Bag?”

Foggy sighs, but is grateful nonetheless. “Chair in the corner, I think.”

“Anything you need?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Matt comes back with Foggy’s bag as Foggy is already putting on his jacket. The hat stand is encircled by lightning bolts, which are now intermixed with tiny dots in all the primary colors. ‘Awesome,’ Foggy thinks. ‘My brain is having a techno rave without my permission.’

Matt’s hand is light on his elbow, and Foggy startles just a little bit. “Come on,” Matt says softly.

It must be a bizarre picture, the blind man leading the seeing one out into the street, but Foggy doesn’t care. Pricks of pain are already starting to throb lightly in his frontal lobe. It vaguely registers that Matt is trying to hail a cab.

He loses track of time during the cab drive. It’s not far, Hell’s Kitchen isn’t that big. Still, six blocks isn’t something to be trifled with when your vision is screwed up nine ways to Sunday, and your head is about to split in two.

Matt is there by his side all the way up the stairs and into his small apartment. Foggy can’t remember the state of disorder it’s in. He tends to leave dirty laundry on the floor sometimes when he’s too lazy to put it in the hamper. Never longer than a day or two, cause he’s not _that_ much of a slob, but he hopes Matt’s echolocation-space-vibration-temperature-blanket sense thing will address that particular concern.

Still, he feels like it’s something he should be announcing. In as few cohesive sentences as possible. “Fair warning. Wasn’t expecting company. Might be messy. You can handle that, right?”

Matt nods. “Yeah, I can handle it. Don’t worry about it, Foggy.”

“Okay, cool.”

Foggy fumbles with his keys, tries to navigate around the funky light spectacle crisscrossing his field of vision, which has also somehow become a lot narrower than it used to be. The keys jingle uselessly before he can even find the keyhole, then the whole bunch slips from his fingers.

“Shit,” he mutters.

“Here, let me,” Matt offers.

“It’s the one with the square-ish head.”

Matt has the door open within seconds and Foggy stumbles inside his sanctuary.

He steers toward the sofa, because, hey, it’s closer and comfortable enough, but Matt’s hand on his upper arm stops him before he can make it a final destination.

“Let’s aim for the bed, shall we?”

Foggy lets out a displeased grunt, but Matt has a very good argument going when he says, “Curtains, remember?”

It’s amazing how he even knows this, because the man hasn’t needed curtains for over 20 years, but, again, he just knows. Few things go by Matthew Murdock.

While Foggy strips out of his shoes, suit, tie and shirt, leaving only the boxers and t-shirt, Matt goes around the room to close the curtains, clears away a few stray items of clothing that are strewn on the floor, and doesn’t use his cane even once. Foggy thinks he might stop being surprised by this any day now.

He sluggishly drags the covers over his body and lets his head sink into his pillow. Lights still dance wildly even behind closed eyelids. It’s unnerving and disorienting.

And then, suddenly, something shifts. The spots crowding his vision fade, and the migraine’s next welcome gift arrives in tandem. Little lemmings in his skull start taking tiny ice picks to the insides of his brow ridge. Unfortunately, dragging his arm across his eyes has no effect whatsoever.

He isn’t sure how long he’s been like this—could have been seconds or minutes—when he feels a light touch on his arm. The mattress dips slightly when his friend sits down next to him. Matt’s voice is low, and Foggy is thankful for the foresight.

“You should take something for this. I looked through your meds, not sure I picked the right ones.”

“They don’t have Braille labels?” Foggy asks tiredly because it’s nice and dark now with his arm blocking out the residual light.

“All I got from the lid was ‘Close tightly. To open, push down and turn,’ and ‘Align arrows, then push cap up with thumb.’”

He sighs. “Let me see.”

Matt hands him three plastic bottles in different sizes, and Foggy tries to decipher the labels in the half light. He hands one back to Matt. “This is the aspirin. Don’t think reflux pills or antihistamines will do much.”

“You don’t have anything stronger?”

“Forgot to fill the scrip. Stupid, I know.”

“Okay,” Matt says, and shakes three of them out of the bottle. The clacking noise they make against the plastic is jarring enough, which isn’t a good sign.

“Here,” Matt says, handing Foggy a bottle of water along with the medication, and Foggy isn’t even sure where that came from. It’s cool to the touch. Refrigerator, then. Matt knows his way around, although he isn’t here all that often.

He dutifully swallows the pills, one by one, cause he’s never been good with oral medication. Matt takes the bottle from Foggy’s hand before he can even fumble to put it on the nightstand.

“Shit. Kill me now,” Foggy mutters when the back of his head makes contact with his pillow.

“I’d rather not.” It’s a nice try, but Matt’s attempt at humor falls short against the stabbing pain. Matt puts a gentle hand on his friend’s thigh. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll stick around.”

“No,” Foggy mumbles into the void. “I’m okay. You don’t have to stay.”

“I know. But I want to. My choice, all right?”

Foggy doesn’t respond, because the ice pick onslaught increases in frequency and strength. Sleep is a long way away. Light years, possibly. The mattress shifts again and Matt is gone.

The next half hour is an eternity of never-ending undulations. Pain ebbs and flows with a sharp ferocity somewhere in the vicinity of his eye sockets. It shifts from unbearable to agonizing in fast cycles, and Foggy just wants the pain to stop. When it hits a peak, he lays down on his stomach and shoves the pillow into his eyes because the pressure around the eye socket seems to help for some reason.

After a while, the aspirin kicks in, but all it does is take the edge off. Which is a relief, but not much more than a marginal one. At some point he feels himself drifting off into a tentative slumber and hopes it will bring some alleviation.

+-+-+-+-+

When he wakes up, the first thing that registers is the pain in his head. Not a surprise. Neither is the low moan that escapes his lips.

The light in the bedroom is considerably darker, so Foggy thinks it may be well past sundown. He shifts under his covers, because it’s too hot, and wishes he hadn’t, because the movement chafes and grates on his already battered pain receptors.

Shapes shift in the semi darkness, and there’s Matt’s gentle voice. “Hey.”

Foggy reasons with coherence, but only manages a meager grunt.

“Feeling any better?”

“Not really,” he manages. “In fact, I feel fucking awful. The doozie I was talking about? Bingo. Yay me.”

He turns to lie on his side, away from the window, even though there’s barely any light filtering in from the streetlights in the first place.

And then there’s something else he was afraid would happen eventually, because the queasiness in his stomach increases severalfold. He struggles to sit up. “Ugh. Shit,” he can only mutter.

“Nausea?” Matt asks, and Foggy can only nod.

Matt is there by his side in an instant, adjusting something on the floor, which Foggy soon realizes is a plastic bucket—wherever Matt got that from. The tiny storeroom off the hallway, probably. He doesn’t have time to dwell on it, because his stomach lurches, fast and violent.

It’s not pretty. It never is. He retches loudly, cause just can’t help himself. There’s remains of lunch and things he doesn’t want to think about. The stench is terrible and makes his stomach heave again.

Matt is there, sitting next to him, one hand steady on his back, the other holding strands of unruly hair out of his face. And he doesn’t know where it’s coming from, because his brain should be miles away from forming coherent thoughts, but the realization is sharp and immediate.

If the smell is already gag-inducing to Foggy, what must it be like to Matt? He must be— Shit. Another dry-heave contracts his rebelling esophagus. He rides it out, then takes a feeble breath.

“Matt,” he rasps. “You should go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Damn, he doesn’t understand, and Foggy doesn’t have the words to explain in between stomach cramps and forehead ice pick attacks. “The smell. It must be terrible for you.”

Matt’s hand presses a little firmer into his back. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I mean, with your senses...”

“I can handle it, Foggy. It’s fine.”

But it’s not, is it? None of this is fine, really. There’s one last dry-heave, and then Foggy sags exhaustedly into a half kneeling, half crouching position on the side of this bed.

“This it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

And then Matt and the puke bucket are gone again, and Foggy thinks he may be losing little chunks of time that his fried brain is unable to process. Matt and the bucket reappear, minus the nasty smell, just when Foggy lowers his body back into a supine position.

“Matt, you really don’t have to do this,” Foggy grumbles halfheartedly.

“Yeah, because you’re so capable yourself.”

“Kinda see your point, but there’s always tomorrow, provided I live that long.”

“Will you just stop moping and suck it up, Foggy? How many times have you watched Claire put me back together?”

Foggy sighs. “Too many.”

“Exactly. This is the least I can do.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

“You’re welcome. You want any of this?”

Matt holds out a wet cloth and the bottle of water, and Foggy gladly accepts both. He wipes his mouth, then takes a careful sip of the water. It feels good, and he wants to tell Matt how much he appreciates this but isn’t sure how.

“Anything else I can do?” Matt asks. “You want any more pain meds?”

“Not sure. They might not stay down.” Which sucks ass, because he could really use some pain relief right now. When people say that their skull is splitting in two? Foggy is sure that it feels like this. Or that this actually feels worse. An axe to his head would be nice, because then maybe at least it’d put a stop to this agony.

“There’s something else we can try,” Matt says. It registers, but it’s too much of an effort to actually respond. And truth be told, he’s open to any suggestions at this point, short of electroshock therapy maybe.

Foggy isn’t exactly sure what Matt is doing when he leaves the room, but it doesn’t take long for him to come back. He’s holding a plastic bowl, as far as Foggy can tell. Liquid sloshes inside. Foggy has an idea what it might be, which is confirmed a moment later when Matt says, “Close your eyes. Don’t startle, this’ll be a little cold.”

He wrings a cloth out over the bowl, and then there’s a heavenly coolness spreading across Foggy’s forehead.

“That help?”

Foggy’s make a small sound somewhere in the back of his throat that he hopes is confirmation enough.

Matt chuckles lightly. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Sorry I’m such a pathetic mess.”

“Foggy, honestly, don’t apologize. I know how much this sucks.”

Shit, yeah. Foggy remembers that Matt had one or two of his own run-ins with migraines during their college days. And he can only imagine how much worse it must be when your ears can pick up sounds two blocks away or your skin is hypersensitive to touch and vibrations.

He always thought it couldn’t be so bad for Matt, because at least he didn’t have the hypersensitivity to light or the visual aura. He suddenly feels like a foolish dickhead.

Matt takes the cloth away and re-cools it, does that few times over the course of the next fifteen minutes. The world slinks away to the rhythm of Foggy’s heartbeat pulsing against his temples. It’s a sort of wakeboarding along the uselessness of his cognitive brain functions, being pulled along by the barely bearable pain. And then, eventually, there’s more blissful sleep that claims him.

+-+-+-+-+

Foggy isn’t sure how long it is until he wakes up next, but it can’t be morning yet. The world outside is very quiet, the light too hazy, and the pain in his head seems to have coalesced into a ball of pure fury and vengeance. It has extended from his eye sockets to somewhere deep in the recesses of his parietal lobe, and it’s just more, more, more—way too much.

His stomach roils and contracts with another bout of nausea. Not this again.

Sharp pangs assault the insides of his head when he tries to sit up. One breath, two, three. He can do this. The bathroom isn’t that far.

He sways slightly from the dizziness when he finally stands on two feet, tries to pad as silently as he can on bare feet, because Matt’s already lost enough sleep over mother-henning him.

With the closed bathroom door shielding him from the outside world, he goes hunting for the good stuff Matt may have missed on his first scouting mission. But there’s nothing. He really should have filled that prescription. For lack of anything stronger, he resigns himself to taking some Advil.

There’s a sudden rush of cold sweat that washes over him, and his stomach does a rollercoaster flip. He’s on his knees in front of the toilet in a second, and sucks in a breath. Then another. A few pants. He can ride this out. He really doesn’t wanna puke again. Cause, ugh, gross. Also... pain.

He breathes into the water filled basin with his hands gripping the rim of the toilet seat for a few, long minutes, then the nausea slowly ebbs away. Thank God for small favors.

But of course karma is bitch, because his head starts throbbing all the more fiercely. The bathroom tiles beneath his knees look blissfully cool. And they are when Foggy lays his head against them. He figures maybe, if he lies perfectly still, he might just make it through the night.

It’s like that that Matt finds him an indeterminable amount of time later.

“Foggy?” he asks tentatively, and there’s definite worry laced through the question. “Did you pass out?”

“No,” he mutters. “Felt sick. Didn’t want to get up. This is nice and cool.” He does realize he sounds like a whiny puppy, but it’s not like it matters right now.

Matt crouches down at a safe distance. “Yeah, I’m not sure this is really the best place for you to be right now.”

“You’re right. The vacuum of space would be awesome. Or any place that has an intravenous morphine drip.”

“Think you can get up?”

He’s starting to drool onto the floor, but he doesn’t care. “I don’t want to.”

Matt’s mouth spreads into the smallest of smiles. “Yeah, I get that.”

“Make this stop, Matt. Can you make this stop?” He’s sure he didn’t mean to say that, and especially not in a tone that spells out too clearly that he’s desperate and in agony and close to tears.

Matt scoots closer, and there’s a gentle hand on Foggy’s arm. “Believe me, I would if I could. Maybe you should take some more meds.”

“Already have.”

“How long ago?”

“Not sure.”

Matt is silent for a long moment, then he offers, “Want me to sit with you?”

It takes Foggy a while to register what this means, because when he finally manages to work through the humongous cloud in his head, how fucking absurd is this whole scenario where your best friend offers to sit next to you while you rest your cheek against the dusty floor tiles?

“I want you to be asleep in your own bed,” Foggy mumbles against the cold surface. “Cause this is the last place you should be at, I don’t know, stupid o’clock.”

“This is the exact place I should be at stupid o’clock when a violent migraine knocks my best friend on his ass.”

“Yeah. I beg to differ.”

Matt settles on the floor in a sitting position with his back against the side of the bathtub. “Can you give me your hand?”

“Why?”

“Acupressure.”

Foggy isn’t sure if he really heard this right, but, fuck it, it can’t get any worse or any weirder at this point, can it? He edges his free hand to where he thinks Matt sits, because he doesn’t want to open his eyes again.

He feels Matt’s warm skin on his, seeking out the fleshy part of his hand in the web between his forefinger and his thumb. The tip of Matt’s thumb starts pressing into the tissue, and Foggy flinches because it’s uncomfortable, but Matt holds it there, softly says, “Don’t fight it.”

He does this for ten seconds, then releases the pressure for a few seconds and presses again. Three times he repeats the cycle, and Foggy thinks maybe, just _maybe_ it’s helping. A little. Could also be the Advil finally kicking in.

“You’re supposed to do both hands,” Matt tells him.

Foggy sighs, because he really doesn’t want to move. But Matt’s low, rumbly voice, him being here, being an awesome friend, doing things most people wouldn’t, Foggy figures maybe he could acquiesce if he tries.

He pushes himself into a semblance of a sitting position, scrambles to sit next to Matt, reaching his other hand over.

“Does it help at all?” Matt asks as he starts applying pressure.

Foggy lets out a noncommittal grunt he expands with a, “Think so. A little.”

They do this in silence, and Foggy lets his hand sink down when Matt releases it. Minutes tick by until Foggy asks, “Do you know what time it is?”

Matt feels for his watch. “Just after four.”

“Awesome. We’re living the dream, buddy. I’m sure this is what you’ve always wanted out of life, sitting on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night with your completely useless friend, pressing your thumbs into his hands to stop his brain from imploding.”

Matt gives him a little shrug. “Think of it this way. I could be out there, getting the crap kicked out of me by a Russian mobster. I think I prefer this.”

“Dude, not funny. On so many levels.” Foggy shifts his weight. “Come on, let’s relocate. Bed sounds like a good option right about now.”

When Foggy sags down on his mattress, he’s thankful for small favors, because the sledgehammers in his head have quieted down to an almost tolerable level.

He preempts any further attempts at mothering by saying, “Before you ask, no, there isn’t anything you can do, other than lay down next to me and get a shred of quality sleep. I know, it’s kinda weird, but it’s not like I’m inviting you to have hot, gay sex with me, which, by the way, I’m not really into, so…”

“Your couch is fine, Foggy.”

“No, it’s not. And I should know because I’ve fallen asleep on that thing way more often than is healthy. I’m gonna be real mad if you don’t take me up on this, okay? Cause at least one of us should be functional tomorrow. Hop in, Murdock.”

He hears Matt sigh, warily watches him shuffle over to the other side of his king size bed. There’s something about listening to Matt’s even breathing next to him that soothes Foggy. Because, for once, he doesn’t have to cater to the niggling worry that his best bud is jumping across rooftops to repeatedly punch bad people in the melon.

+-+-+-+-+

The other side of the bed is empty by the time Foggy drifts to a state of wakefulness. Most of the daylight is being shut out by his drawn curtains, and a sleepy look at his alarm clock tells him it’s going on 9 AM. He hopes Matt has already called Karen, but knowing Matt, he probably has.

Foggy takes inventory, and is glad that the thunderous monstrosity of a migraine has recessed to something that another few aspirins should be able to contain. He still feels sluggish and meat-grindered, but at least he can deem himself a human being again.

After a quick detour to the bathroom, and several splashes of water in his face, he finds Matt at the small table in his tiny kitchen, cradling a mug of coffee in his hand.

Foggy offers a tentative, “Morning.”

“Morning,” Matt greets him back. “Feeling any better?”

“Yeah, some. Did you get any sleep?”

Matt nudges his chin in Foggy’s direction the way that he sometimes does. “Enough to be functional, given an appropriate amount of caffeine.”

“Is there any coffee left?”

“I can make some more.”

“No,” Foggy interjects. “It’s cool, I’ll do it. Getting kinda sick of just lying around. Which isn’t to say I didn’t appreciate your mother-henning. In fact, all of that was pretty awesome.”

“Really, don’t mention it, Foggy.”

Foggy starts setting up his coffee machine, but he knows he can’t just leave it at that. “Save your humble BS for someone who’ll indulge you, because you need to know just how _much_ I appreciate it. You were pretty phenomenal last night. Honestly. I can’t ever thank you enough.”

There’s that slight smile tugging at Matt’s lip that tells you that he’s really touched, even though he doesn’t want to admit it. “You’ve done this for me more times than I’ve deserved, and I don’t just mean all the Daredevil related incidents.”

Foggy scoops three spoons of coffee grounds into the filter. “Yeah, admittedly, I wouldn’t mind if those happened less often.”

The smile vanishes from Matt’s face and there’s that subtle bitterness that taints his expression. Foggy knows it too well. They’ve had ample variations of this conversation, and they never end well.

He suddenly wishes he hadn’t brought this up, because he’s less than ready to get into any of that right now. Foggy adds, “Can we pretend I didn’t say that? Cause that’s not something I think I can deal with today.”

Matt dutifully lowers his head. They both know they’re going round in circles, and maybe Matt has hoped that Foggy would have accepted the Daredevil part of him by now. Foggy does keep trying, but it gets so much more complicated whenever Matt comes back with another patched up gash on his face, or a limp, or a broken rib or clavicle.

The coffee maker sputters to life, and Foggy opens his fridge. It’s pretty much gaping empty, because, yeah, he’s lazy and a slob, and usually not a breakfast person. One of the kitchen cupboards yields a package of soda crackers. He sits down at the table and opens it, happy to counteract the yawning emptiness in his stomach.

“Want some?” He holds the package out to Matt, who shakes his head.

“No thanks.”

“Okay,” Foggy tries. “This won’t do, Murdock. I need cheering up. Help me out here.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure I’m the right person for that on less than five hours of sleep.”

“Did you call Karen?”

“Yeah. Told her you’d be taking a sick day.”

“Did you tell her why?”

Matt frowns. “Did you not want me to?”

“No, it’s cool. Just not sure I can stand being mollycoddled by _two_ people. At the same time.”

“Hence the mention of the sick day,” Matt reminds him.

“I know you meant well, but there’s a ton of work we still need to tackle. I’ll be good as new, once the aspirin kicks in.”

“You know, you don’t have to play the hero for me. Or Karen.”

“No, that’s usually your part. Except you actually _are_ one. But it’s not that. Seriously, I’m gonna go stir-crazy here on my own. And then I’m gonna feel guilty, and get all self-loathy, and that’s not a pretty sight, so believe me, pal, the office is really the better option.”

Matt downs the last mouthful of his coffee and gets up. “Suit yourself. Though I need to get a head-start, drop by my place, get a change of clothes.”

Foggy gives him a thumbs-up. “Okay. See you at the office.”

“See you there,” Matt says, and then he’s gone.

Foggy pours himself a mug of fresh coffee, and enjoys the relative silence and the reassurance that he made the exact right decision when the handsome blind guy tapped his way into their dorm room, and he welcomed Matt Murdock into his life with arms wide open.

Although some days, he isn’t sure who, between the two of them, is the luckier person yet.

+-+-+-+-+


End file.
